Who’s to Blame for the Anthropocene? The Dangerous Myth of Universal Human Responsibility
Far from a shared burden, the planet’s crisis stems from unequal histories of exploitation and power, demanding we rethink who truly drives ecological collapse.
Have we entered a new geological epoch shaped by human activity? While scientists, academics and politicians alike increasingly throw about the term ‘Anthropocene’, the reality behind this fashionable label reveals a profound injustice. For at the heart of this seemingly scientific designation lies a troubling mythology — the notion that humanity as an undifferentiated whole bears responsibility for our planet’s ecological crisis. It’s a convenient fiction that dissolves the stark realities of power, capitalism and colonialism into a bland narrative of species-level culpability.
In March 2024, after 15 years of deliberation, the International Commission on Stratigraphy decisively rejected the proposal to formally recognise the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch. Their verdict was delivered with devastating clarity — the proposed mid-20th century boundary, coinciding with nuclear testing and the ‘Great Acceleration’, simply didn’t meet the stringent criteria required for such a fundamental shift in how we categorise Earth’s history. Yet make no mistake — the rejection of the Anthropocene as a formal geological designation hasn’t dimmed the term’s cultural and political significance.
The Myth of Universal Human Responsibility
The very name ‘Anthropocene’ — derived from ‘anthropos’, the Greek word for human — perpetuates a dangerous mythology. It suggests that all humans, everywhere, are equally responsible for the environmental devastation we witness today. What utter nonsense.
Let us be absolutely clear: Not all humans created this crisis. As radical critics have forcefully argued, the term dangerously obscures the disproportionate responsibility of capitalist and colonial powers. If we were to be honest about historical responsibility, we might instead speak of the ‘Eurocene’ or ‘Anglocene’ — for it was primarily European industrialists, particularly British coal capitalists, who unleashed the carbon-intensive economic model that now threatens planetary systems.
The evidence is compelling. As Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg have demonstrated, the Industrial Revolution that ignited our current trajectory wasn’t some inevitable expression of human ingenuity but rather a specific socioeconomic reorganisation rooted in exploitation. Coal-powered factories in England weren’t the product of humanity’s collective decision-making — they were the tools of specific capitalists seeking profit through new forms of extraction and exploitation.
Think of the staggering injustice: Indigenous communities in the Arctic or Amazonian forests, who have contributed nothing to climate change, now suffer its most devastating impacts. How can we possibly speak of an ‘Anthropocene’ when responsibility is so unevenly distributed?
Alternative Frameworks: Challenging the Dominant Narrative
Thankfully, critical scholars haven’t simply accepted the Anthropocene’s problematic framing. They’ve proposed alternative conceptual frameworks that better reflect the social, economic and political realities behind our ecological crisis.
The Capitalocene, forcefully advocated by Jason W. Moore and others, places capitalism’s insatiable appetite for profit and growth at the centre of our analysis. This frame isn’t merely semantic — it represents a fundamental rejection of the notion that humanity’s intrinsic nature has caused our crisis. Instead, it reveals how specific economic logics, particularly capitalism’s pursuit of ‘cheap nature’, have driven ecological destruction. As Moore argues, capitalism is fundamentally defined by “the imperative of endless capital accumulation, which implies increasingly serious metabolic antagonisms”.
Then there’s the Plantationocene, a concept that traces our present crisis to the invention of plantation systems. As Donna Haraway explains, plantations facilitate “multispecies forced labor” and fundamentally disrupt natural generation times across species. The plantation system depends on “very intense forms of labor slavery” and the radical simplification of ecosystems — patterns that continue to shape our industrial agriculture and resource extraction today. This framework reveals the deep historical roots of our crisis in systems of exploitation that predate the Industrial Revolution.
Most radically, Haraway has proposed the ‘Chthulucene’ as an alternative that decentres human agency entirely. This framework emphasises how “the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in tentacular practices”. Unlike the human-centred Anthropocene, the Chthulucene demands we recognise our embeddedness in complex webs of multispecies relationships.
The Politics of Responsibility and Action
The stakes in this debate extend far beyond academic quibbling. How we name and conceptualise our era fundamentally shapes who we hold responsible and what solutions we imagine possible.
The Anthropocene narrative has proven remarkably compatible with technocratic governance and market-based ‘solutions’ that leave fundamental power structures intact. After all, if humanity as a species is responsible, then technological fixes and minor adjustments to our current system might seem sufficient. This framing conveniently absolves specific corporations, nations and economic elites from direct responsibility.
What’s particularly troubling is how Anthropocene discourse risks erasing differential human responsibilities and vulnerabilities. It produces a “decontextualised, disaggregated, and dispersed subject” that undermines the social relations necessary for collective political resistance. Little wonder, then, that despite mounting scientific evidence, meaningful action remains elusive.
The brutal truth is this: the Anthropocene concept, for all its scientific veneer, is fundamentally political. As Finney and Edwards argue, “The drive to officially recognise the Anthropocene may, in fact, be political rather than scientific”. We must recognise this political dimension if we’re to confront the true drivers of ecological crisis.
Beyond the Anthropocene: Towards Climate Justice
If we reject the Anthropocene’s universalising narrative, what alternatives remain? A framework grounded in climate justice and historical responsibility offers a more honest and effective approach.
This means acknowledging the “embodied inequalities of the Anthropocene” — how environmental destruction intersects with structural violence, social inequality and colonialism. It means recognising that our ecological crisis stems not from human nature but from specific systems of power and exploitation.
Most importantly, it means confronting the uncomfortable reality that addressing climate change requires fundamental transformation of our economic and political systems. Minor adjustments to capitalism’s destructive logic won’t suffice — we need radical reimagining of our relationship with each other and the planet.
The challenge before us couldn’t be clearer. Will we continue peddling the myth that all humans bear equal responsibility for our planetary crisis? Or will we confront the specific systems of power — capitalist, colonial, extractive — that have brought us to this precipice?
The answer will determine not just how we understand our past, but whether we have a habitable future at all.
Bob Lynn / 19-May-2025
